Benches cleared over stealing with huge lead and hit-by-pitch

Things got a little heated last night between Chinatrust Brothers and Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions. As both benches cleared over stealing with 10 runs lead and several hit by pitch incidents in the previous innings.

Here’s the video of the bench clearing incident in the 8th inning last night.

Recap of the incident

There are total of 6 hit-by-pitch, 1 incident of hit-by-pitch attempt and 2 steals with a huge lead through out the night. Here’s the recap video of it which lead up to the clearing of both benches.

Top of 2nd – Hit by pitch #1 & #2 by Lions.

Top of 5th – Brothers steals 2nd base with 7 runs lead. Sort of already a no no as an unspoken CPBL rule.

Top of 6th – Brothers steals 2nd base with 10 runs lead. Can see Lions outfielder, catcher and skipper unhappy about it.

Top of 8th – Hit by pitch #3 by Lions.

Top of 8th – Hit by pitch #4 by Lions. This one got to be intentional, as Tseng was the guy who stole 2nd base in the 6th inning. Typical CPBL umpire, very slow at issuing warnings.

Bottom of 8th – Possible hit by pitch attempt. With Lions rookie in the batter’s box. It’s quite obvious Brothers’ reliever is trying to hit him with 4 straight inside pitches. It’s really a horrible call on the umpire’s part. Should’ve put a stop to this before it escalate further.

Bottom of 8th – Hit by pitch #5 by Brothers. Both benches cleared and warning was issued to both sides.

Top of 9th – Hit by pitch #6 by Lions. Lions reliever ejected.

Brothers Skipper on the incident last night

“Despite the 10 runs lead, due to my experience in Taiwan so far there’s no such thing as a huge lead. At that time, Lions’ fielder still holding 1st base, that’s why we did it. If their 1st baseman is away from the bag we wouldn’t have done it” Said Brothers skipper Cory Snyder about swiping 2nd base with a 10 runs lead.

With Snyder comment above, the online baseball community immediately found an older video clip showing Snyder doing the exact opposite when it comes to stealing with a huge lead.

Below is a video taken from 26th of May where Brothers runner swiped 2nd base with a 6 runs lead with the direct instruction from Snyder. It’s worth noting, the 1st baseman was no where near the 1st base bag.